Book Review: Love Letters to Poe, Volume 3: Tales Torn From the Heart edited by Sara Crocoll Smith

“What a dreary place for lovers to meet, but what a wonderful place to lay a corpse to rest.”

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Love Letters to Poe, Volume 3, is a fantastic assemblage of 28 poems and short stories inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” all creative, varied, captivating, and evocative, making this reader incredibly excited to read Volume 2!

Favorites include:

• “The Lovelorn Hearts” by Jasmine De La Paz, a deliciously twisted gothic surrounding love, rage, and cunning; jealousy, decay, and deception; murder, madness, survival. Chilling, foreboding, moody, and page-turning!

• “Facts of the Case” by Jared Baker, a fascinating imagining of events in which a doctor visits a Baltimore asylum to assess a resident, only to discover there’s much more at play than he realized. A riveting, heartrending chronicle of tragedy and truth, wisdom and morality, compassion and choice, illusion and revenge, insanity and consequence.

• “The Read Leaf” by Kurt Newton, a deeply unsettling, compulsively readable poem of macabre curiosity, morbid satisfaction, and haunting comeuppance.

• “The I in the Eye” by Hugh Alan, a gruesome and atmospheric haunted house story dripping with cringe-worthy gore, obsession, mystery, doom, woe, and bedlam enlivened by unique black-and-white accompanying illustrations.

• “Her Pale Blue Eyes” by Leanna Renee Hieber, a ghostly reimagining that builds upon and enhances the original, shining a spotlight on feminine fury, devotion, fear, and vengeance. Eerie, moving, and hugely satisfying.

• “The Mournful Influence of Unperceived Shadow” by Mary Rajotte, a gorgeous work of blackout poetry that gets to the tenebrous heart of the matter, illuminating deeper meaning as it pares back Poe’s tale.

• “Unquiet Hearts” by H.V. Patterson, a vengeful, rage-filled exploration of toxic masculinity and female roles, agency, and desire. Tragic, appalling, infuriating, and triumphant.

• “How They Met Themselves” by Kris Waldherr, a dark and devastating narrative of marriage and loss, betrayal and guilt, despair and broken promises. A melancholy, grim, and stirring examination of a relationship gone wrong.

Thank you to Sara Crocoll Smith and Jasmine De La Paz for sharing an eARC of this tremendous collection — it’s an engrossing, delectably harrowing reading experience Poe fans will treasure.

🖤Amanda